To have the most powerful spy agency in the country pimping their spying services directly to Minister’s under the guise of ‘economic benefit’ and then have no paper trail explaining what the hell happened is utterly unacceptable, yet this story has been eclipsed by a backbencher taping a staff member!

To date, New Zealanders have been mostly apathetic as the government build up it’s ability to spy and store personal information on us. Most of the government’s “targets” have been so-called “terrorists”, immigrants, criminals, student-debt defaulters, and those on welfare benefits or living in state houses.

The NZ Intelligence and Security Bill is the culmination of twenty years of increases in the powers of NZ’s spy agencies. It gives them everything they could hope for. The Bill radically broadens the focus of the SIS and the GCSB so they can run operations on almost anything. It allows them to do literally anything to advance on operation or to cover it up. It allows them to co-opt anybody else into an operation. And it grants immunity from prosecution to everyone involved.

When New Zealand amended the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) Act in 1996, it was the first significant change in almost 20 years. The 20 years since that amendment have seen a constant stream of law changes extending the powers of the country’s spies. The Intelligence and Security Bill currently before Parliament is the latest of these. In this series of three articles, I outline why I think this Bill represents the most disturbing attack to date on the rights and freedoms of New Zealanders.

The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) are being handed more powers by the Government, and given legal backing for spying on New Zealanders, in spite of yet another example of their wrongdoings being exposed this week. It has been revealed that in 2012 the two agencies harassed and persecuted […]

At some point NZers have to swallow their pride and knowledge they’ve voted in a power abusing lunatic who maliciously twists fear and manipulates stupidity to give the GCSB, SIS and NSA stasi like powers that are an anathema to any progressive modern state.

It could safely be argued that stories of “jihai brides” would scare the bejeezus out of the public, in the process softening opinion to welcome extending the powers of the SIS and GCSB. If so, this would be a cynical ploy by National and our spy agencies to manipulate public opinion to accept the unpalatable; a massive increase in state surveillance and mass-gathering of data on all NZers.

When a spokesperson for the government tries to employ scare-tactics to persuade the public that increasing surveillance powers for various arms of the State – in this case the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) – is warranted, then suspicions arise.

In effect, the GCSB’s “new role” has moved from intelligence gathering (ie, finding out who is supposedly – and I use that word deliberately – launching “cyber attacks” against us) – to one of being a State-funded-and-operated, quasi-Norton Anti-Virus agency?
Is this credible?

That’s right folks, the GCSB isn’t a stooge for America and doesn’t feed all it’s info directly to the NSA for their own purposes, it’s really a giant cuddly anti-virus system that keeps your computer safe.